Romance scam
A romance scam is a confidence trick involving feigning romantic intentions towards a victim, gaining the victim's affection, and then using that goodwill to get the victim to send money to the scammer under false pretenses or to commit fraud against the victim. Fraudulent acts may involve access to the victim's money, bank accounts, credit cards, passports, Cash App, e-mail accounts, or national identification numbers; or forcing the victims to commit financial fraud on their behalf. These scams are often perpetrated by a fraud factory operated by organized criminal gangs, who work together to take money from multiple victims at a time. Pig butchering scam is increasingly rampant and widespread type of romance scam which usually also entail the high-yield investment program scam.
Scams can be detected and prevented with simple precautions. More money is lost each year to romance scams than to similar internet scams, such as technical support scams.
Modus operandi
The mode of scam, which has several variations, usually works on the following script.Fake personal images
Romance scammers create personal profiles using stolen photographs or images generated by AI of attractive people for the purpose of asking others to contact them. This is often known as catfishing. Often photos of unknown actresses or models will be used to lure the victim into believing they are talking to that person. US military members are also impersonated, as pretending to serve in the military explains why the scammer is not available for an in-person meeting.Because the scammers often look nothing like the photos they send to the victims, the scammers rarely meet the victims face to face or even in a video call. They deceive their intended victims by making plausible-sounding excuses about their unwillingness to show their faces, such as by saying that they cannot meet yet because they are temporarily traveling or have a broken web camera.
Tricking the victim
Scammers are very adept at knowing how to "play" their victims – sending love poems, sex games in emails, building up a "loving relationship" with many promises of "one day we will be married". Scammers ask their victims many questions, but share little about themselves. They often shower the victims with compliments.Communications are exchanged between the scammer and victim over a period of time, sometimes months or even an entire year, until the scammer feels they have connected with the victim enough to ask for money. Scammers prey on the victims' false sense of a relationship to lure them into sending money.
These requests may be for gas money, bus or airplane tickets to visit the victim, medical or education expenses. There is usually the promise the scammer will one day join the victim in the victim's home.
Victims may be invited to travel to the scammer's country; in some cases the victims arrive with asked-for gift money for family members or bribes for corrupt officials, only to be beaten and robbed or murdered.
The scam usually ends when the victim realizes they are being scammed or stops sending money. However, people are often slow to believe the reality, and the stigma of falling for such the deception may deter them from reporting the fraud to the police. Many victims, even when confronted with strong evidence, cannot bring themselves to believe that the person who seems so loving in text messages is instead a criminal scammer. They may react angrily or violently against anyone who objects. Banks can lock down the victim's money, especially when financial abuse of an elder is suspected.
Criminal groups
Criminal networks defraud lonely people around the world with false promises of love and romance. Scammers post profiles on dating websites, non-dating social media accounts, classified sites and even online forums to search for new victims. The scammer usually attempts to obtain a more private method of communication, such as an email or phone number, to build trust with the victim.Because the scammers are working in groups, someone in the group can be online and available to send e-mail or text messages to the victim at any hour. The rotation between different scammers, all claiming to be the same person, is difficult to detect in text-based messages, whereas it would be obvious if a different person showed up for a face-to-face meeting or in a video or telephone call.
Scale
Australia
According to the Australian government, the crime has also been in the rise in that country. Monetary loss in Australia rose from $20.5 million to $28.6 million from 2017 to 2019. SCAMwatch, a website run by the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission, provides information about how to recognise, avoid and report scams. In 2005, the ACCC and other agencies formed the Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce. The site provides information about current scams, warning signs and staying safe online.United Kingdom
According to UK Finance, romance scams were the fastest growing category of cybercrime in the United Kingdom in 2023, increasing by a third from 2022 to a total loss of £93m.United States
In 2023, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation received reports of more than US $650 million being lost by victims of relationship scams. This was approximately seven times what was stolen through phishing scams and almost 100 times the reported losses from ransomware attacks.According to FBI IC3 statistics, the crime has been at an alarming rise. Monetary loss in the United States rose from $211 million to $475 million from 2017 to 2019. The number of cases of reported romance scams rose from 15,372 to 19,473 in those two years.
"The FTC estimated on average $2,500 was sent to romance scammers in 2020, more than ten times the median loss across all fraud types. Given the rampant use of social media and rise of online dating services, the opportunity for scammers to prey on individuals is only growing, explained Emma Fletcher, an analyst at the FTC.
"To be able to make that connection and do it remotely is something that may not have been possible a decade ago, but it's very much possible and socially quite common now for people to make love connections online and they're taking advantage of that," Fletcher said."
Target demographics
Many victims are in their 40s to mid-60s, seeking a companion. Elderly people are often targeted, because they are more likely to have assets, such as retirement funds or homes, that can be stolen. Victims tend to have an unmet emotional need for companionship, as well as a desire for greater economic security and a lack of purpose in life.Sensitive people are more vulnerable to online dating scams, based on a study conducted by the British Psychological Society. According to their results, sensitive and less emotionally intelligent people are more likely to be vulnerable to online dating scams.
Some people are serial victims: even after one scam is uncovered, they are still susceptible and will fall for another scammer with a different story.
Variations
Narratives used to extract money from the victims of romance scams include the following:- Saying their boss has paid them in postal money orders, and asks the victim to cash the forged money orders and then wire money to the scammer. The bank eventually reverts the money order cash but not the wire transfer.
- Saying they need the victim to send money to pay for a passport.
- Saying they require money for flights to the victim's country because they are being held back in their home country by a family member or spouse. In all cases the scammer never comes, or instead says that they are being held against their will by immigration authorities who are demanding bribes.
- Saying they have had gold bars or other valuables seized by customs and need to pay taxes to them before they can recover their items and join the victim in their country.
- Saying they need money to join the victim in his or her country, after meeting on an online dating site.
- Saying they are being held against their will for failure to pay a bill.
- Saying they need money to pay hospital bills.
- Saying they need the money to pay their phone bills in order to continue communicating with the victim.
- Saying they need the money for their own or their parents' urgent medical treatment.
- The scammer actually is employed directly or indirectly by a website, with a share of the victim's member or usage fees passed on to the scammer.
- Sometimes the scammers do not explicitly ask the victim for money, but instead coerce them to receive packages and forward the items to Nigeria.
Pig butchering scam
Many of the perpetrators are also victims lured from abroad under false pretenses and then forced to commit the fraud by organized crime gangs.